Thursdays at noon

Several years ago, for a period of about five years, I worked in a retail environment.  During that time, I came to know not only some regular clients and customers, but also their routines.  Yes, indeed, there were a handful with routines so regular that you could set your watch by them!  One couple hit our store every Friday night as part of
their regular "date night" circuit that included two or three other stops.  I don't think most folks were conscious of their routines — some were near-daily, some a couple days a week, others came in weekly or monthly — and of course most people popped in purely at random.

When you stand in the same place for an extended period of time, watching the world revolve around you, patterns can't help but emerge.

Druscilla was a regular client, a retired English teacher who was tall, thin, very deliberate and economical in her movement, very elegant in demeanor; always put together, she was unflappable, exuding a refined calm.  Except on Thursday afternoons when she would uncharacteristically breeze in the back door — and "breeze" is the only word to describe it — just after lunch.  She'd come in on the breeze, no matter the weather, and pause dreamily for just a moment inside the door; she'd look fresh, with her cheeks flushed, hair a bit tousled and windswept; she'd smile and greet me, and then sort of swoosh by and carry on with her business.

I decided that she must be having an affair — a wild, mad, passionate, every-Thursday-at-noon love affair!  It's the last thing anyone would ever have thought about Druscilla.  It's the first thing that came to my mind as I'd watch this Thursday afternoon routine.  I'd have a little smile to myself every week, play around with a storyline in my head.

Or she might have had a standing appointment for a massage.  Driving home after mine last night, I felt just like Druscilla looked on those Thursdays.  Calm, happy, breezy, refreshed, relaxed… so very wonderful.

I saw my first thunder and lightning of the season last night!  Hopefully, I'll see more!  The complete lack of thunderstorms, or volatile weather of any kind, was sort of eerie last year.  This year, March both came in and went out like a lamb, with barely a half-inch of precipitation, but M. Nature has been on a catch-up mission.

Happy Wednesday!